


if you feel lonely (i could be lonely with you)

by zenithaurora



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/F, Lesbian Mai (Avatar), Light Angst, Mai & Zuko Are WLW & MLM Solidarity, Mai (Avatar)-Centric, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Rivals to Childhood Friends to Lovers, Scars, pansexual ty lee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29192175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenithaurora/pseuds/zenithaurora
Summary: Mai doesn't want to like the new girl. Then she takes one look at her grey eyes.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Winter ATLA Femslash Week 2021





	if you feel lonely (i could be lonely with you)

The Royal Palace Garden has always been one of her favorite places in the world, or, at least, since she had memory of what it’s like to have preferences.

The green pasture may be considered a common feature in most nobles’ lawns, but it’s considered rather uncommon when taking in consideration the most arid parts of the nation. As of now, the ground is covered by bright pink, red, purple and white blossoms, their delicate, thin petals dancing in the breeze. A large pond is in the middle of the garden, filled with colored carps and turtleducks.

However, as she is lying against the robust trunk of a tall tree with lacy, light green leaves filling its canopy, Mai decides her favorite part of the garden it’s the fountain. It’s quite small, especially considering this a feature in the Royal Palace Garden, and especially when comparing it with the beauty of the rest of the place.

It doesn’t matter to her; the fountain may go unnoticed but it will always be her favorite part of the place.

The rough trunk feels coarse against the soft skin of the bare expansion of her nape, but for the first time in months, the heat is bearable and the sound the carps make while they flap their fins it’s soothing, so she closes her eyes.

A strident voice breaks through the tranquility, alerting her of the incoming presence of Princess Azula.

She sighs.

These programmed visits had started early on her childhood when she was barely out of her toddler phase. Her father, one of the highest-ranking nobles and an ally to the Royal Family, saw Mai as a way to get closer to the current Fire Lord and the heir to the throne, and thus, a higher status overall. Her mother told her they were doing this so she could have a prosperous future. However, the glint in her parents’ eyes that sparkled anytime they received another benefit that came with being close to the Royal Family betrayed them and revealed their true intentions.

She realized from early on this was her role to play. From an early age, she understood she was pawn in her parents’ political game and she accepted this reality, albeit begrudgingly. Her family had been forcing a friendship between her and Azula as soon as she learned to speak. It made her wanting to have been born mute.

Although Azula was a year younger than her, at seven years old she already carried herself with strong dominance and a compelling mightiness, qualities that made Mai cower in uncertainty but also admire her with envy.

Azula might not be her favorite person in the world, but she always felt an odd reassurance in her presence, as she knew, for better or for worse, she was the center of her attention.

Except, _who is that?_

With the years she got used to be only the two of them, so who was this stranger interrupting their usual routine?

Azula is walking towards her with another girl around their age walking by her side. Her appearance immediately catches Mai’s attention.

Her clothes are a lighter shade than what most people would wear in the Fire Nation; she frowns when she realized they were practically pink. Even her face is atypical when comparing it with the rest of the population. Most people in the Fire Nation tended to have brown eyes, while nobles and royals’ eyes shades covered the wide spectrum of bronze and gold. However, her eyes are grey as the overcast sky before the storm that rarely made its presence known in the Fire Nation but that Mai loved so dearly. Even her hair is out of place, considering that it was a deep auburn tied in a long braid that almost reached her waist, whereas as most women that belong to a higher status have dark hair kept in elaborate updos to prohibit their hair from reaching their shoulders.

She reaches the conclusion that she may be from the colonies. People from those places are prone to be weird.

Well, colonies or not, she didn’t know why this girl was here. She wants her gone.

“Who is that?” Mai asks in neutral tone. Living with her parents had gave her enough practice to perfect this tone.

“Hi, I’m Ty Lee!” the girl beams, and Mai cringes. She swears her voice is the most strident, highest-pitch thing she had ever heard in her life.

Ty Lee flinches. _Good_.

“We were going to play hide and explode,” Azula chimes in and shrugs, “you can join us if you want”.

Azula knows how much she hates that game. The last and only time they played Mai got covered in mud. It took her days to fully get the soot off her hair.

“I’ll play”.

***

Mai quickly reaches the conclusion that she hates Ty Lee. She doesn’t understand why she suddenly became Azula’s best friend, but she wants her _gone._

They are playing yet _another_ session of hide and explode and she can’t take it anymore. Any moment now, she is going to forgone all training and yell at the two of them. She knows it will probably earn her the scolding of the century from her parents, but she would rather endure any punishment from them than to spend another second here with them.

She wishes she was with Zuko now. He may be too sensitive but he is far more tolerable than Azula, even likeable, and he _hates_ hide and explode as much as her.

Azula gets called by one of her servants, and, as she had dictated, Mai and Ty Lee remain still in the garden.

She grasps a couple of strands of grass and plays with them for a few seconds until she pulls it off the fresh soil. The action grounds her, and she repeats the motion a few times.

“Can you stop doing that?” Ty Lee asks in a soft, almost timid voice.

“Why?” Mai asks back, perplexed.

“It hurts the grass” she replies.

_Okay; what?_

Still, the earnestness in her wide eyes convince Mai of leaving the grass untouched.

She puts her hands in her pocket, touching the edge of one of her knives, and stares at the sky. It’s overcast today, an unusual sight in this nation. She closes her eyes, trying to imagine the sensation of raindrops caressing the soft skin of her cheeks.

She hears movement next to her and she opens her eyes to the sight of Ty Lee sitting by her side.

“Why do you hate me?” she inquires.

She is taken aback by the bluntness of her question. “I don’t hate you; I merely dislike you”.

“Okay, then why do you dislike me?” she asks.

Mai sighs. She doesn’t want to deal with this type of conversation at the moment. If she were honest with herself, there is nothing remarkable wrong about Ty Lee. She is far more likeable and less draining that Azula. Mai can attest to that.

“Does it bother you to share Azula?” she asks again, no hint of smugness hidden in the glint of her eyes.

Mai doesn’t want to answer. It’s not necessary for Ty Lee to understand the nature of her relationship with Azula, so she doesn’t want to discuss it.

“Your aura is grey” Ty Lee laments.

Mai thinks this girl is the weirdest human being she has ever met. Nevertheless, it _is_ the most interesting conversation she has had in weeks.

“I don’t know what that means” she admits.

“Your aura is a cloudy light grey. It means you have no direction or ambition. You also have splotches of dark grey here,” she points at her chest, “and here,” she points at her throat.

_Well, that was unnecessarily rude._

“I have a pink aura” she beams, but her smile fades as she continues, “but it’s duller now,” she shrugs and smiles again, although now Mai notices it looks more forced, “I still like my pink”.

Mai lets the conversation die. She has never been one for talking, and she wasn’t going to change that now. She recalls what her mother had once said: _“be mindful with your words. Don’t speak more than it´s needed, or you´ll reveal the shallowness of your thoughts”._

She rarely listens to the meaning behind her parents’ words. Why should she give them the attention when they had never stopped to listen what _she_ had to say? However, even she could admit that, from the moment she had heard that advice, she held the saying dear to her chest like an armor.

“What is that?” the curious voice coming from Ty Lee disrupts her thoughts.

Mai is puzzled about what she is referring to until Ty Lee crawls towards her, closing the space between them, and pulls her knife out of her pocket, to which Mai reacts on instinct and snatches the knife out of her hands.

“Didn’t your parents teach you manners?” she snaps.

Ty Lee recoils at her harsh tone, hunching her shoulders. “Sorry. I just wanted to know”.

Mai wants to remain angry at her insolence and lack of self-awareness, but there is something in her wide-eyed look that didn’t allow her to stay mad for long. She sighs.

“It’s okay,” Mai approaches her and gently lifts her chin so she can have a clearer view of the knife she is holding in her hand. The brownish maroon center gives a deep contrast against the silvery border. A stream of sunlight reflects on it. “This is a long-bladed knife,” she grabs it by the cherry wood center and does a swift motion and the blade swooshes, “and they are used for speed and lethality”.

“It’s that how you got your scars?” Ty Lee interrupts.

Mai is taken aback. Although, she has numerous scars on the palm of her hands from when she was still young and unexperienced in the handling of weaponry, they are tiny and an almost-invisible white, the bigger ones being in places no one could see, like in her forearms and her thighs from when she was still learning how to put her knives away.

“Yes” she replies, confused at how someone like her could be so observant.

Ty Lee grins and raises her hands, showing her calloused palms, a noticeable incongruity with the softness and bubbliness that Mai came to associate with her personality.

“I got them from gymnastics” she gloats.

“I don’t know what that is” Mai admits.

Her grin grows even wider. “I’ll show you” Ty Lee squeals and jumps from her place in a sudden movement.

As she watches Ty Lee stand and walk on her palms, Mai feels the tiniest tingle of her lips curling upwards and the smothering tension from before fades away in the wind that plays with the willow’s leaves.

***

Zuko trains with dual swords, Mai learned just a few months after her parents forced her to hang out with Azula. She didn’t understand why someone like him, a bender, would want to train like a nonbender. Then she saw Azula firebend in front of him, noticed his crestfallen expression and understood.

She enjoys talking to Zuko about weaponry and training scars.

After Ursa’s disappearance (Banishment? Murder?), Zuko seemed to close himself off. His shoulders would tense and his breath would become shallow every time his father or his sister approached him. He makes such an effort to keep a mask of neutrality that, at times, it iss as if she were staring straight into a mirror.

Nevertheless, he is never this unemotional with her; quite the opposite. His emotions would burst like ferocious water going through the only tiny spaces it was allowed. At times, his hypersensitivity and tempestuous nature makes her uncomfortable. Other times, Mai thinks there is something peculiarly admirable about the transparency of his feelings and how much he _lives_ them.

_At least one of us should._

She has been waiting for him in their usual spot, in front of the pond with colored carps and the turtle ducks. He was supposed to arrive almost an hour before. Mai knows that sometimes his private lessons could overextend, but it was never for more than ten or, at the worst of the cases, twenty minutes. She has been waiting for fifty-four minutes and counting.

Azula and Ty Lee emerges from one of the numerous corridors that surrounded the garden.

Although Azula seems to be in her usual mood, walking straight with her hands held together behind her back and her usual smirk plastered on her face, Ty Lee doesn’t carry herself with common demeanor. Gone is the smile that put the sun to shame, and her feet are firmly flat to the ground.

Whatever had happened, it couldn’t be good news.

She decides to concentrate in Ty Lee. “Your aura will turn black if you keep looking like that” she deadpans. Mai may not understand much of auras but it was an easy way to get Ty Lee to open up.

Her lips trembles and her eyes droops. “Haven’t you heard?” she sniffles in a tone that didn’t suit her usual bubbly personality.

_Okay, something was really wrong._

“Why would I ask if I knew?”.

“Let me fill you in,” Azula chimes in, “Zuzu, in all his stupidity, decided to face a general to an Agni Kai yesterday and faced our father instead”.

_Zuko._

_Agni Kai._

_Against Ozai._

Maybe there is a silver lining in the way her parents raised her.

“Is he at the infirmary?” she asks. She almost cringes at how hollow her voice sounded to her ears but it was better than to unleash the tempest of emotions that are spinning like a tornado in her head at the moment.

“He was this morning,” Azula replies, “he is probably on a ship to Agni knows where now”.

Mai controls the tremors that are threatening to escape from her throat before speaking. “Why?” she asks.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” she says, “the only reason why that traitor could ever be accepted in the Fire Nation again is if he brings the Avatar with him”.

 _‘The Avatar has been missing for hundred years, you idiot!’_ she wants to yell.

A few soft cries came from behind Azula. Tears are spilling unrestrained down her face with no shame from Ty Lee’s red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s okay, Ty Lee; it’s what he deserves” Azula smirks, but Mai can notice the slight glint of pure fear in her eyes.

Mai stands up, leaves the garden and seeks for solace and refuge in the desolate halls, away from the mocking glare of Azula.

The clank of her shoes sounds clangorous against the glistening tiles and in the loneliness that characterizes the corridors of the palace so well. She walks until she finds a pillar that is in the round corner in direction to the ice house, and lets her body fall against it. She wraps her arms around her knees, places her chin on top of them, and wills herself not to cry.

It is a harder task than she expected.

She doesn’t know how long has she been frozen in that position, a blank gaze staring at the nothingness the walls had to offer, when she felt a soft but callused hand laying on her shoulder.

Neither of them says anything. Mai lets the suffocating silence settle, knowing she can find shelter in her touch.

***

Life gets harder for her with Zuko gone. Everything seems to get bleaker by the day, but Mai ponders, if Zuko’s leaving it’s her dark cloud, then Ty Lee it’s her silver lining.

***

Mai waits for Ty Lee under their special place under the tallest willow tree in the garden. She takes one peek at the pond and averts her eyes immediately. Ever since Zuko has been banished, it feels almost forbidden to even get close to their old spot. 

Ever since Zuko has been banished, things had changed. She always felt a sense of understanding and comradery with Zuko— mostly on how they know their fathers only consider them a piece in their games for political power. Zuko has never been one for advice, and Mai never sought him for it, but now more than ever, she feels like maybe she needs him. Her parents still force to come to palace to bond with Azula, but now there is no Zuko to work as a buffer, as a mental break. The days spent here are suffocating and at times, she feels like there is an actual a hand grabbing her by the throat applying force to her windpipe; not enough to kill her, just strong to make her wish everything would go black. At least, she can find assurance and release in Ty Lee’s warm presence.

Mai notices Ty Lee coming her direction to sit by her side in the cool shadow of the willow’s leaves. The cornices of her mouth give the slightest upward curl before she even realizes. Then she notices that Ty Lee is walking her way with a crestfallen expression plastered on her face and her own face frowns.

She hasn’t been as bubbly and cheery lately as when she first met her, but Mai had alluded her recent behavior to growing up and newfound maturity. Then again, Mai can’t recall a moment in her life she was as cheerful and positive as her so maybe it’s harder for her.

Ty Lee sags to the ground with a graceless whine, pulls her knees to her chest, and places her head on them. She seems almost… gloomy. That is not a good sign; being cynical and pessimistic it’s her thing, not Ty Lee’s.

In an unusual move from her part, Mai begins the conversation.

“What’s wrong? Did you fall and twisted your ankle again?” she queries, attempting to stop her genuine concern from showing on the surface.

“No. It’s my aura” she replies.

“What’s wrong with your aura?” Mai asks. Ty Lee only winces and tightens her grip around her knees, “you can trust me” she tries to coax the answer out of her mouth, “I would never tell Azula”.

Ty Lee’s gaze is solemn and penetrating even through her half-lidded sight, looking from below. Her eyes are boring into Mai with such a fierce intensity that makes her uncomfortable.

“It’s getting murky” she sniffles, “it’s almost beige now”.

Mai doesn’t know how to answer to that, so she just holds her hand and hopes that it’s enough consolation for her.

“It’s okay; I’m going to fix it” she adds.

“How?” Mai asks curiously.

She raises her head so they are looking at each other at the same height. “I’m going to join the circus; it’s my calling”.

_Oh._

“The circus?” she mumbles out.

Ty Lee just nods and tightens the grip on her hand. “I just came to say goodbye to you”.

Mai isn’t sure if Ty Lee says anything more; she sees her mouth moving but she feels like she is underwater; her hearing is muffled and her sight is blurry. Ty Lee wraps her arms around her neck and throws herself into her lap.

 _At least my sense of touch still works_.

She remains there, under the willow, her fingertips barely hanging onto the lifeline that is the lingering shadow sensation of her body pressed against hers until it vanishes into the wind and up to the leaves of the tree.

_I don’t care._

She doesn’t feel anything when one of the servants comes to pick her up and tell her it’s time to go home.

She doesn’t feel anything during the trip back to her house.

She doesn’t feel anything when her mother berates her once again for dirtying her clothes.

She doesn’t feel anything when her father comes home and goes directly to his office without stopping for a second to greet her.

She doesn’t feel anything when Tom-Tom crawls to her and pulls on the seams of her long skirt.

She doesn’t feel anything as she takes off the pins of her hair and lets it down to go to sleep.

_I don’t care._

She didn’t care about her. At all. Why would she?

She repeats this to herself every night like a mantra until her eyes resembles the sand watch that takes its residence on top of her father’s desk.

_I don’t care._

Then why does it hurt so much?

**Author's Note:**

> Title based on 'Sports' by Beach Bunny.


End file.
